The only celebrities in my small town were community celebrities—the coach of the university basketball team, a senator, a news anchor. It was hard to get excited about seeing those people, beyond the first pang of recognition: I've seen that person before; I know that person's name; I know something about that person, who knows nothing about me. OK.
During my seventh grade year, however, one "real" celebrity did move to our town: Bonecrusher Smith. I had never heard of him, of course, as I'd never watched any boxing, but I was told he'd been the "Heavyweight Champion of the World" until Mike Tyson came along, and that impressed me enough.
Once, during the sole week that my friend Steph and I went early morning jogging in her gated community, we passed him going the opposite way. "That was Bonecrusher Smith," I told her. He was easy to spot, because he was the only black man living in that community. It seemed only minutes before he passed us again, even though the circle we were tracing was two miles long. Bonecrusher, not surprisingly, was in good shape.
His daughter went to my school, but I didn't know her. I only know that sometimes I would see Bonecrusher walking through the locker-lined halls, looking powerful, reserved, and out of place. One day I got up the nerve to ask him for an autograph. I handed him a folded-over piece of lined notebook paper and held out a pen. "B-o-n-e-c-r-u-s-h-e-r," he wrote neatly.
What must it be like to be known as "one who crushes bones"? I suppose the name was second nature to him by then, and even started sounding normal outside of boxing land. I wonder if he found it at all silly, handing a little white girl a piece of paper that simply said, "Bonecrusher" (which, in any other context, would be absurd).
I thumbtacked it to my wall when I got home.
I cleaned the kitchen this evening. I cleaned the kitchen and straightened the living room and hung up my pile of clothes and put my shoes away.
The new cover on my couch looks good, I've decided. I found the couch on a sidewalk in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, about a month ago. I was reluctant to adopt it at first, although now I can't figure out why. It's in great shape and was even free of charge, apart from the $16 cab fare. It made it through the day-long street-wide stoop sale without finding a home, and, in the end, I was actually asked to please take it.
We were standing with it in my kitchen—it turned on its side with its label exposed—when we discovered that its parent was named IKEA. While I was a little disappointed (owning some IKEA is okay, but owning too much is not, and I am nearing the acceptable limit), it made it easy for me to find a couch cover that fit its unusual size.
My living room looks like a different place altogether, now that I've gotten rid of that '70s plaid love seat that came my way during high school. Except for a few household items—such as the inflatable grasshopper on the arm of the couch, the Homies collection on top of the stereo, and the framed German postcard of a child being attacked by roaches—it looks almost as if an adult lives here now.
When my apartment is clean, I notice all of the things I've acquired—that I have a domestic collection including a toaster, a spice rack, a tool box, and an iron (though, admittedly, I've never used the iron). I even have a few unnecessary appliances, such as a foil cutter for wine. I even have a ladle.
I really like my place, and I love living alone, but I feel like I'm still a little too young for such a thing. What am I doing with my own apartment? It's as if my parents are on vacation and I'm playing house. Somehow, though, I'm not so bad at it; I pay my bills and cook myself meals and sometimes I even dust the top of the refrigerator or scrub the side of the stove.
To be fair, though, I also sometimes eat crap for dinner and stay up too late and spontaneously invite people over and neglect the dishes, just as I would if my parents were really on vacation.
I heard the high-pitched and cacophonous roar several seconds before I saw its source: a gabbing and shrieking mob of children on the subway platform, charging our car. We collectively looked toward the noise as it came into focus, and, I imagine, a few people drew a slightly deeper breath in preparation for the onslaught.
Normally the train is quiet, except for the barely audible treble sneaking out of nearby headphones, the conductor (or the recorded counterpart) announcing the next stop, the singing of the brakes and the steady pulse of the tracks, or a rare conversation between people who accidentally bumped into each other.
People in the morning car ignore all sorts of things, or perhaps just endure it. The train may lurch and toss its passengers like a salad, but only quiet sorry's and excuse me's follow the upheaval. The first time they played the new terrorism warning over the train's intercom, no one batted an eyelash. A performer can sing and dance and beg for change without any recognition, and a homeless person can sleep across the bench in a crowded car and people will sit carefully on either side.
Children are a different breed. They talk over each other, their volume escalating like an approaching ambulance. If the train takes a corner too quickly, they yell in surprise, stumble over each other, and then start giggling. Rather than silently assess what stop is theirs, they call the question out into the air for anyone to answer. They don't seem to notice the advertisements that capture the gaze of the adults. Instead of slyly checking out the other passengers, they are aware only of themselves and the words that they're trying to belt out. They have a type of freedom that the adults have lost.
I find myself looking at the kids, wondering about them: what they'll each be like when they're older, what it's like to grow up in New York, who's bossy and who's shy. Sometimes I want to hit fast forward to see who they become (although in doing so, my interest would inherently wane, as I don't have the same sort of curiosity about the adults). Sometimes I'm envious that they're growing up in such a hardcore place, although more and more I'm learning to appreciate the alternative—the move from small to large. I think that mostly I just want to have a sample of their experience, just so I can know it first-hand.
The kids got off at Union Square, spilling out of the car like a gelatinous mass, taking with them their thick cloud of competing bird-like noise. The car returned to its slumber for the rest of my ride.
Today my cat threw up in an unusual place: in her food bowl. I must say I was kind of grateful that she kept it out of reach of my blind feet, but it does make me wonder what was going through her head (if anything) when she put her food back where it came from.
...
So, I put up the nine-year-old New Orleans photos. They even look old.
Nine years ago, during my sophomore year in college, Erin, Jeremy, and I drove my Honda to New Orleans. It was on that trip that I became acquainted with my first SLR camera, PJ Harvey's Dry, the Murder Capital of the World, and different state laws, among other things. I'm pretty sure it was also my first substantial road trip with friends.
Our first night there, we stayed at a place called the Monte Carlo, a dumpy motel near the interstate, one that we found at 3 in the morning after a cop had directed us into an unsafe part of town. All along I'd promised my friends that we could stay with a girl whom I knew at Tulane, but that girl would prove to be evasive for the duration of our trip, and we never even saw her. By the time we left town, Erin and Jeremy were convinced that she didn't exist.
After a single night at the Monte Carlo, we decided to shop around for other sleeping arrangements. Minutes after we pulled away, Jeremy discovered that he'd forgotten his pillow, but when we returned to the motel, the door to our former room was open and his pillow was gone, so he thoughtlessly took one of the crunchy motel pillows as a replacement. The new pillow, which we referred to as Monty, was uncomfortable, musky, and untrustworthy, so we stuffed it in the trunk of my car, where it would live for the next six years.
I remember the names of all the hotels we perused, because they were so notably bad that we talked about them days after having visited. The Hummingbird Inn was by far the worst. It was no doubt condemned (or should've been), as the wooden floor and walls had gaping holes that allowed the outside air to breeze right through. There was no bathroom in the room, and the single king-size bed sunk into the uneven floor. We gave the hotel clerk a polite excuse and bolted.
We ended up at the Downtown Inn instead, a creepy establishment that had absolutely no other guests, yet it had an indoor parking lot full of dusty cars. Our room's single window was barred, and the giant mattress had several nickel-sized holes in it. (The "thou shall not kill" billboards all over the city had our imaginations working.)
The room was more expensive than it should've been, and since the presence of a third person increased the price substantially, we staged a scene in the lobby in which we pretended that Jeremy was a Tulane student and that he was visiting Erin and me, just as we happened to be checking in. Our act was rather pitiful, and went something like, "Hi Jeremy! It's good to see you! How's TULANE?!" The hotel clerks—unconvinced—made us pay the full amount.
We wandered around the French Quarter, mostly, unsure of where else to go. We met a homeless teenager who'd just moved to the city from the North, to be where it was warmer. We gave $12 to a homeless woman named Dorothy, who convinced us that it cost that much for her to sleep at the local shelter for a night (it didn't occur to us until later that shelters are generally free). We wandered among families at the riverside aquarium. We observed people yelling to second-floor windows for green beads, inhaling nitrous balloons, and roaming the streets late into the night. We watched street performers collaborate and produce jazz notes that almost visibly floated from their instruments. Once, after completely forgetting where we'd parked, we rode in a cab through the Quarter's streets in order to find our car. We discovered that even some cabs have roaches.
It was exhilarating, eye-opening, absurd, and fun. On the long drive back, we tried to remember everything we'd just experienced, putting it into a neat list that (inherently) only made sense to us.
I no longer have that list, nor am I still in touch with Erin or Jeremy. (I am, however, still in touch with "the girl at Tulane.")
Photos coming soon.
It happens roughly the same way every weekday morning. The radio begins its banter at 8:05 and I fail to hear it. At 8:13 the surging beeps set in and I pretty successfully ignore them, or, on rare occasions, somehow incorporate them into the sleepy nonsense boxing around in my head.
By 8:14 she is sniffing my face or walking across my curled up body in an effort to tell me to Make It Stop. A hand in the air, I bring it down squarely on top of the plastic screamer and all is suddenly quiet. I whisper a "thank you," she settles down by my head and begins to purr, and I promptly disappear again, until my ten-minute grace period is over. And then we begin again.
Sometimes I make the mistake of trying to turn off the beeping part of the alarm and just lie in bed, with my eyes closed, and listen to the news for a little while. It goes okay for a moment; usually the first few stories register as "good" and "bad," depending on what I think of those particular items, and then they stop making any sense, just as I begin to float away. Of course, if I could watch myself do this, I would yell at myself the same way I would yell at the girl in the horror film: bad idea! But, just as I am able to tune out the alarm, I hardly ever hear her yelling.
Sometimes the alarm confuses me, despite its relatively simple design; I do nonsensical things with the buttons and I disable it altogether. Take that! Sometimes I look at my watch and don't have a clue what time it is (it doesn't help that it's set 15 minutes fast, or that my alarm clock is set 10 minutes fast), and sometimes I don't know when I'm actually supposed to get up, or whether it's morning or night.
I've almost come to depend on her, even though she really only cares that I create peace, and not whether I actually get out of bed. She's generally quiet, patient, and sweet, which is really the only good way to wake me up. (I don't respond well to the covers being jerked away or hearing loud DJs or happy "good morning" songs. Not that she's capable of any of those things.)
Once, I recall her meowing in time with the alarm, I guess to boost the volume, and recently, she planted a front paw directly in the middle of my forehead and left it there until I silenced the devil alarm. It's the only time I can remember laughing the very second I woke up.
The photographers' rights protest felt like being part of the paparazzi while simultaneously being a tabloid celebrity. Naturally, all of the protest's participants had cameras, and when there was a subject of interest—it seemed that we were often in agreement as to what subjects were of interest—we collectively pointed our cameras in the proper direction and fired away like eager soldiers.
But, since we were also the subject of our own pictures, we were all constantly being photographed as well, regardless whether we had our cameras held to our faces, at our hips, in our bags. Regardless of anything. Eventually I got used to it (more or less), but it never felt normal to be part of a pack of people roaming through the subway, especially one so prolific with its memory boxes.
I arrived at Grand Central alone and on time. The group was easy to spot—a collection of people loosely gathered near the information booth, holding various shapes of cameras while somehow looking decidedly un-tourist-like. I stood on the edge and watched for the first several minutes, initially too groggy and anti-social to take out my camera or interact.
Lots of the black and silver bodies had large, expensive lenses and clever flash attachments, and some people carried intimidating video cameras equipped with lights. Others had, instead, rather lo-tech models; my German friend Janine, for example, brought a disposable camera she'd purchased specifically for the event. She'd innocently removed the cardboard casing, which drew lots of attention from the other photographers, who were curious about the unusual little black plastic number she carried around.
We set off toward the subway together, a group of strangers with a common grievance: the proposed MTA camera ban. Shortly after we began, we were unavoidably were split up by subway cars and walking speed and general confusion, and the mitosis served to produce several miniature protests out of the initial 60(?)-person unit. While riding the trains in a rectangular path, we talked to each other about the ban, about our experiences with the cops, about our cameras, about where we were from. A few strangers stopped me to ask Why all the people with cameras?, but, for the most part, the protest seemed to be less about getting immediate attention and more about recognizing rights and perhaps about getting a little media coverage. [If you're interested in leaving comments for the MTA about the ban, go here.]
I was generously given some literature to carry with me that states my photo-taking rights, for the next time I'm pestered by the police. As I can't imagine that the police would appreciate ME telling THEM about the law, I'm hoping they don't question me again any time soon.
Our final destination was the MTA headquarters. We stood outside and waited twenty minutes for the rest of the initial group to catch up. Once they arrived, we (guess what?) photographed ourselves in front of the building, from behind a large cloth American flag someone had brought along (to highlight our rights, I guess).
Of course, being that we're all fond of taking pictures, it was apparently unacceptable for only one person to get a photo of the congregation in front of the MTA. Not surprisingly, one by one, photographers crept to the other side of the flag to snag a picture of the group, so that, in the end, there were absurdly more people on the wrong side of the flag than there were in front of the MTA. (I stayed on the MTA side.) As we stood in opposite territory, divided by the flag, we shot each other like friendly opponents in a camera war.
This is coming to you second-hand.
She stepped into the near-empty subway car with a bag in one hand, and a can of disinfectant spray in the other, finger poised on the trigger. For five solid seconds, she sprayed the mist up and down the empty bench, filling her corner of the car with a flowery-smelling cloud and clearing the germs and the residue of previous passengers out of her way.
Next, she took a paper towel out of her bag and carefully wiped down the bench and the poles that were in her reach. She sat down in the spot she'd disinfected, then deposited the soiled paper towel into a long plastic bag, which she methodically tied off. She produced some sanitizing lotion, greased up her hands, and sat with them clasped in front of her, while she looked nervously around the car and mumbled to herself.
She was in her 30s. Her clothes were immaculate, and her hair was neatly tied up in short braids.
When she stood up as the train slowed to her stop, she held onto a pole with a paper towel she'd readied for that moment.
Since I moved to New York almost two years ago, I've been taking photos of signs, graffiti, tags, commentary—anything I found interesting, clever, attractive, or strange. Although there are hardly any people in the photos themselves, the pictures I've compiled are inherently about people, specifically the ones who live in New York. [Disclaimer]
Once I drove through a "free expression" tunnel on the campus of a certain all girls' college. (The tunnel's concrete walls were provided as space for the students to spraypaint whatever was on their minds, without the threat of getting in trouble for defacing school property.) I was disappointed to see lots of "girl + boy" tags and little else. Perhaps the worst tag, which was printed in large puffy letters, simply said, "I love my friends!" This set of pictures is for whoever wrote that.
"Takin' pictures of the bridge?" She said it with a hint of disdain in her voice, as if I should know better.
"I'm taking pictures of graffiti," I answered. The graffiti just happened to be on the side of the [Williamsburg] bridge.
She made me show her my ID. I silently debated whether to admit to having it on me—I was just walking around my neighborhood, after all, and carrying my ID isn't required for that, at least not yet. I handed it to her, figuring it would make our interaction easier.
She let down her guard a little, offering the excuse, "Terrorism, you know."
Her partner was in the driver's seat and was on the opposite side of the car from me. His blue uniform fit snugly, and his belly came close to kissing the steering wheel. He wasn't quite as laid back as his partner, or perhaps he was just really bored.
Once he saw my ID, he had something to latch on to. "This is not a valid ID. This is not a New York ID." He repeated himself again and again, saying it a new way each time. He quizzed me on where I lived, how long I'd lived there, and so on. He threatened to "take me in to the station" so that they could figure out who I was, since my ID was so obviously not valid.
I had to bend down to see his face, since he never got out of the car. She stared up at me with large, round eyes, and he squinted at my ID as if it were written in another language. "Okay, so I'll get a New York ID," I said flatly. "I didn't know." I assumed that would wrap up the conversation. What more was there to say?
More about my invalid ID, apparently.
"You're supposed to get a New York ID after six months of livin' here. You in school? You work, right? Well you have to have a New York ID then. Because you live here. You need a valid ID." He recycled his complaints once again, I said "okay I'll get a New York ID" a whole lot, and he finally let me go.
I'm still not sure whether I'm supposed to look over my shoulder the next time I take a photo of the bridge. Photos may soon be banned in subways, but can landmark photography be prevented as well? Will tourists be limited to buying postcards of the Statue of Liberty? I assume that if someone with sinister intentions really wanted a photo badly enough, s/he could take one on the sly (or, presumably, just pick up a postcard of the landmark as well).
In other bizarre neighborhood news, twenty minutes prior to my conversation with the police, a 12-year-old rode past me on his dirt bike said to me, "Nice ass." I turned to look at him, confused, because he's, like, TWELVE, and he looked right at my face and said it again, just in case I didn't hear him the first time. Although I may look young for my age, I certainly don't look twelve, or even twenty. What was I supposed to say? Or, perhaps a more interesting question: what did he expect me to do?
Do you ever wonder if you're not very good at being what you are? What I mean is, does it ever occur to you that you might not really know what you're doing, when it comes to being a ____, and that all other ____s are in on a secret that you're not? (Fill in the blanks with: girl [woman?], adult, whatever.)
Alison recently asked, "What do you know a lot about that no one ever asks you about?" It took me a while to come up with my own answer, and once I settled on something, I sort of stopped thinking about it, at least in relation to myself. (I do occasionally ask other people that question, however.) It bothered me that I had trouble with my answer, and I wanted to ask someone else to help me figure it out, which of course is silly. Who would know better than I would?
I know the alphabet in sign language; in fifth grade, my friends and I used to spell out words across the classroom. I know the phonetic alphabet; in college, Jay and I left notes on each other's cars written in our disguised language. I know the population of several North American and European cities (thanks, in part, to my brother, who used to read [out loud] chunks of The World Almanac in the car on family vacations). How to give a cat a shot of insulin. What it's like to be a preacher's daughter. How to make coasters out of bathroom tiles. How to do flips on a trampoline. The lyrics to the song Troglodyte a cappella. How to hit a solid backhand in tennis. The various accepted billiard rules in England, the US, and Germany. How to diagram a sentence.
I feel like I'm missing something, something important. It's strange to reduce yourself to such traits, especially since, by definition, they're traits you're not known for. It's almost like I'm talking about someone else entirely.
